Always the same
Yesterday when I was driving along my myself, I suddenly felt the expression on my face. It was this exact expression from my first grade school picture:
That’s my expression when I’m getting through something I don’t really want to have to do because I’m unnerved or sad or a little scared. In the photo, it was because it was my first school photo ever. Today it was a dear friend’s mother’s funeral. The determined expression is because I’m trying to go through it with some kind of grace and calm and appropriateness because that is what one does.
The 51-year-old me met the six-year-old me in the loop of that one expression, pulling me back through the years, reminding me that I’m exactly the same person in so many ways.
We grow, we change, but we are also born A Person With Stuff In Us. Parents, especially those with more than one child, marvel at it. “They just come out with a personality,” they say.
With one child, it is easy to either blame or praise parenting skills for who the child is. As the sample size grows, the more obvious it becomes that newborns are already people, not just a blank slate.
The precipitating event for this post was a Facebook update by my niece, who had gone tent camping with her husband and five children. They had a great time, a fact I find semi-astounding.
I was always the kid who didn’t want to be camping in the tent. If we had a trailer and a tent, I wanted to be inside the trailer. What I really wanted, though, was to be in a hotel with a Swimming! Pool! and an ice machine and vending machines and beds to jump on.
Guess what? I still want to be in the hotel, not camping.
And while my family was always trying to economize (with five kids to feed), I flatly refused to eat burgers on the rare occasion we ate out. I wanted the most exotic food on the menu, which, at Fred & Myrtle’s Drive-In, was the shrimp basket, and God forbid if I didn’t get my shrimp. No cheeseburger for this kid.
Fast forward four decades.
“You always have to get the weirdest thing on the menu,” says the guy I’m dating. Like there’s something wrong with that.
I always wanted to read and write, never to do math or draw or do P.E. or make crafts. And here I am, with four blogs and a writing job. I still have the math, drawing and crafts skills of a moderately talented second-grader. And I’m just starting to like exercise. I’ve never been on a sports team and probably never will be.
What about you? What has followed you through your entire life?
We The People
Here’s what I asked over on Facebook:
Here’s the question I’m pondering: what should we expect for a person working full-time in our society? Should they be able to feed, clothe and house themselves on the money they make? Should they be able to support a child? Pay for medical care? Heat? Lights? Transportation?
Do we have that expectation, or is it a Grapes of Wrath situation where there’s no low too low? Talk to me.
I started thinking about it when I heard that most of the people who get food stamps are working people, whose benefit averages $133 per month.
One of the security guards at my old work was a proud new daddy. His big regret was that he didn’t get to see his son much – after 8 hours as a guard, he went to work for another 6 hours in the kitchen of a chain restaurant, and then on weekends worked two 8-hour days in a warehouse store.
He had zero days off and zero health benefits. He was a hard worker but not well-educated, or, it struck me, as someone capable of benefitting much from higher education (to put it bluntly – he just didn’t seem very bright).
So I wonder about this guy and about people like him. Is it ok that he worked 88 hours a week to make ends meet? What do we do with hard-working but not particularly intellectually capable people? Should a lack of abstract thinking skills keep him working 80+ hours a week his whole life?
His lack of health insurance is bothersome, too. Of course he and his family will need medical care. If his employers don’t offer it, who pays when he or his wife or child gets sick?
I’m really wondering what minimum wage means when it doesn’t cover the minimums of life – food, clothing, shelter. Some politicians want to abandon the minimum wage. Would we be ok with a society where there is no bottom, like China or other countries where people work for pennies an hour?
What do we want? What should we expect? I’m full of questions on this Labor Day. What do you think?
Wordless Wednesday: You Could Come Visit
Believing the Impossible
There’s a meth freak down the street. Her addiction has turned her into something that seems not quite human. She’s stripped down, muscles twitching over bone, wild-eyed, hair spinning out into an electric halo of black and grey. Her stained pants fall down over her hips and her favorite t-shirt says in 6-inch high letters:
RIP
My Grandson
J_____ M______
She’s completely in her own world, or in 1000 worlds at once. She’s accompanied by a small army of yapping chihuahuas and puppies, none of them with collars or leashes, some always skittering into the street as she yells “Goddamnityoumotherfuckerasshole come back here.”
Then she scoops them up and alternately screams at them and kisses them as they squirm in her arms, overwhelmed by her confusing attention.
Her house is a whirling vortex of chaos. There are always people coming and going, stopping their cars in the middle of the street, yelling at each other.
There are broken windows, music playing too loud at all hours, messy piles of junk appearing, being sorted and hauled off.
Sometimes projects start and take too long, like mowing and edging the grass for six hours. Then progress is abandoned with the mower on the lawn and piles of moldering clippings on the sidewalk left for weeks.
I woke this morning, Sunday morning, thinking about one remarkable thing.
If you believe in Jesus – and my personal beliefs are a matter of some complexity and confusion – you have to believe that Jesus loves this person – this crazy wreck of a woman – as much as he loves anyone.
The true miracle of Christ is that this person is as beloved as you or me or Oprah or Rick Warren. This woman, who looks from the outside as if she has done everything wrong, who is smashed into pieces by her choices and her life, who is lost, who is a huge mess, is the person Jesus talked about loving most.
It’s an almost impossible belief, to think of everyone as beloved and worthy of love. It is, in a way, the most frightening thing on earth. I think that’s why we do so much to run away from it, but all of our prettiness, all of our comforts, all of our perfection can’t save us from the one terrifying mystery: we are all equally loved.
“The beasts of the field shall honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen.”
In Suebob’s World
Put your small, reasonable, lightweight carry-on items here. All other luggage should be checked. Thank you.
Hello and welcome to a new episode of If I Ran Things, They Would be Different. Feel free to play along in the comments section.
If I Ran Things:
1. Fitted sheets would all have a tag in the middle of the bottom edge that said “BOTTOM MIDDLE” in my world. I mostly buy vertically-striped sheets because I’m sick of trying to figure out which direction they go.
2. In my world, all clothing stores would have the clothing size on the hangers, so you’d never have to fish down inside a bunch of clothes to find the little teeny tiny size tag that is there with all kinds of other pointless tags and extra buttons (and pieces of sweater string that make me think “Are you kidding me? You think I know how to repair a sweater with a piece of string and that I will be able to find said piece of string when my sweater does come unravelled?”)
3. Sleeves for clothing above size 10 would NEVER be cap sleeves. And in my world, the person who invented cap sleeves would be punished by being shown an endlessly rotating slide set of the widest part of my upper arms accentuated by cap sleeves while the too-short armhole creeps up into my underarm fat. I predict they’d last about 13 minutes before going ’round the bend.
4. Carry-on luggage. If you can’t carry it, it is not carry-on. If it needs wheels, it is not carry-on. If it is so heavy that you clock another passenger in the head while trying to stand on tiptoes to stow it, you are banned from flying forever in my world.
5. In my world, people say “You’re welcome.” Not “No problem,” not “No worries,” not “Ok.” It’s not that difficult.
6. When someone holds open a door for you, acknowledge them. A nod, a “Thank you,” a smile. It all goes a long way. Do NOT breeze through while avoiding their eyes. In my world, people would have the right to yank your earbuds out by the wires just to have a word with you about that.
7. Turn signals. Enough said. I don’t know what the punishment in my world would be for failure to use turn signals, but it would be swift, significant, and painful. Maybe something like having to listen to Stevie Nicks sing “Silent Night” on repeat. Just twice or three times – I’m not a MONSTER.
8. A word to my gym: two bottles of sanitizer on a 6,000 square foot weight floor is not enough. In my world, every machine would have sanitizer and a roll of paper towels and a waste bucket. Have you SEEN some of these people? These are people you don’t want to share swamp-ass sweat with.
9. In my world, people would understand how science works.
10. And last but not least, if I ran things, every news site would have a moderated comments section where morons who aren’t doing anything but being stupid, mean, inflammatory or racist would be deleted immediately. Look, it’s time. It really is.
What would YOUR world be like?
Advice on Where to Meet Women Other Than in Bars or By Crushing Your Soul With OK Cupid
The now thankfully defunct Bikini Bar
Part One of a Series: ZUMBA class – NO, do NOT turn away!
I know what you’re thinking, and I’ll assuage your fears. Zumba classes are 99.5 percent women flinging themselves around to high-intensity Latin dance music, sweating like crazy. How are you going to fit in here? Well, let me handle your objections.
1. I’ll look dorky
Of course you will, dear. That’s how we’ll know you’re not gay. The one gay guy in the class can always dance like Ricky Martín. We find you adorable in your dorkiness.
2. The gay guy will try to pick up on me
Don’t be ridiculous. You look like a dork.
3. The women will all be fat and/or married
In about the same proportion as the general public.
4. I won’t be able to do it
Yeah, you will. If you try to keep up, you’ll probably be a sweaty mess, but so will everyone else.
5. It’s the dorkiest, gayest thing ever
Yes, maybe. But do you want to ever hook up with a woman, or not? If you want the chance of having sex this decade, you had better put down that joystick (euphemistic or not) and go out in the world
6. My friends will laugh at me
Do not tell your friends until you start being seen around town with Brianna, the girl you took out for frozen yogurt after class and who has a Zumba body, including hips that do not lie. Then they’ll want to know where the classes are held.
7. I have bad knees
Wait for my next posts on where to meet women. I have some other ideas that don’t involve shaking your butt like Shakira after a large frappucino.
Things Have Not Changed
I just spotted this photo of me as a toddler:
My hair has not changed one bit in 50 years. Weird.
In other news, I got to meet intrepid commenter RotaryKat, who was vacationing in my area. We went out and drank a little wine and ranted about things and got to know each other’s faces. Excellent.
I did not take photos because I am the worst blogger ever. But you all knew that already.
Walking and Talking
Goldie and I are walking slowly around the block. I mean, very slowly. The poor old girl just limps and gimps along, stopping every few steps to smell, which I think means she is catching her breath, because she never had to stop and smell so much before.
We approach a gang-member looking guy leaning against his fence. Tattoos on his neck, white t-shirt, black slacks, the usual.
He also has the shiny-eyed, blown-out-pupil look of someone who has a head full of chemicals not found in nature.
As we walk by, I say hi – I have seen him before and he is my neighbor, though one street over.
“I wish I was walking my dog,” he chokes out suddenly.
“Yeah?” I say, a little puzzled.
“Max, my schnauzer, he got run over right here,” he says, pointing at the street. “Now I can’t stop crying. I gotta stop crying.” He wipes his eyes on his t-shirt sleeve.
I stop and listen as he talks about Max, how much he loved that damned dog, how he was out walking him every morning at 6:30.
“That damn dog cost me fifteen hundred dollars,” he said.
“And he stole your heart,” I said.
He leans back from the fence and I see the pistol in his waistband. Whoa. But I figure a guy who is weeping over his dog probably won’t do me any harm just then, so we talk about Goldie, how old she is, what kind of dog. All the usual dog questions.
“I can never have another dog,” he said. “I could get another schnauzer, but there’d never be another Max.”
“You never know,” I say. “The day may come. When I got her, I wasn’t looking for a dog. She was just there in front of me and I knew she was mine.”
I asked his name and he told me, and I told him mine. Now we were real to each other. Beyond stereotypes, beyond gangs and problems and scary people. Just two people who love their dogs, meeting up on a Saturday afternoon.
Wordless Wednesday: Flying at the Fair
Unexpected Rage, Unexpected Inspiration
This is the sticker on my car. In truth, I put it on there so I could find my very nondescript car in parking lots, since I tended to walk right past:
If you look closely, you’ll see it has been defaced. Yes, someone felt strongly enough about “Eat More Kale” to walk up to a stranger’s car in public (at home I park behind a locked gate) and scratch through it rather forcefully about 6 times.
WAIT! WE HAVE AN UPDATE from my comments section – whew:
My name is Bo, the “Eat More Kale” guy from vermont. Eatmorekale.com is my business and the green stickers are my business card. NOBODY has cut your sticker or slashed it……they do that in the extreme heat of summer. I have the sticker on my car and it has the same 6 cracks in the plastic. These stickers are good quality but not the BEST..cause they’d be too expensive otherwise. I assure you..NOBODY has messed with your sticker. Rest assured..Nobody hates you or EatMoreKale.com. I could send you a pic of my sticker if that’d help you believe me and rest at ease. This is a NON ISSUE.
Bo from Vermont.
This is why I love the internet.
In other news, this video made me happy in my heart:
For every chatroulette guy who is making horrified faces, a couple other people dive right in and sing along. This gives me hope for the world in a way that brings tears to my eyes.
I love seeing that kids have been raised with enough love and support and encouragement that they can feel free to be goofy and to participate in something spontaneous and fun. I often feel sad that so many adults seem so afraid and locked up in their bodies and their pain, dragging their sad pasts and stories along with them every step of the way.
I’m hoping the next generation, because they’ve been taught to talk things out, to share, to have less shame, will have more fun adulthoods. Seeing this makes me feel like that may be true. I hope that the kids are alright.
